The Thing With Feathers
by lwbush
Summary: Xander is sort of being stalked.


The Thing With Feathers

The Thing With Feathers

By Lori Bush

Feedback: lwbush@charter.net or onlist is fine  
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, etc. own Buffy. You know the routine. I used to try to write cute and clever disclaimers, but now I think cute and clever fiction is better. I aspire to that…  
Distribution: Let me know, 'kay? Any list it's sent to is cool.  
Summary: Xander is sort of being stalked.  
Continuity: "The Gift" didn't happen that way at all. See, Joss, THIS is how it was…

Rating: PG-13 – might even be PG, but playing it safe  
Author's notes: I really didn't hate "The Gift" totally, but I like my version of what happened better, since I thought of it first. Oh, and if you can't read a Word doc, let me know, since I don't want to do those silly asterisks for italics this time. But I guess I need to put that note elsewhere since if you can't read a Word doc, you won't be reading this. :D

Dedicated: To Frank Capra – you'll understand why if you understand the dedication. *g*

~**~

"Hope" is the thing with feathers 

_That perches in the soul_

_And sings the tune without the words_

_And never stops at all._

_ _

_Emily Dickinson_

_ _

~**~

"Don't you have somewhere you need to be right now?" Xander asked her with annoyance.

"Nope," the blonde woman answered airily. "I don't have to eat or sleep anymore; I can't get sick. I don't ever even have to pee now. I'm just here to be with you." She smiled with satisfaction.

"You know, at first, that was a great comfort. This is starting to be a little weird, now." He understood about vampires and demons. He'd dealt head on with monsters that made your nightmares real, and killer gods. But Xander Harris, who had lived through things other people couldn't even imagine, was having a hard time dealing with the apparent 24/7 presence of his dead girlfriend's ghost.

The final battle with Glory had been horrible. The god had drained Dawn almost to the point of death before they were able to shove her through the portal to her own dimension, and close the thing. The damage had been enormous, and the whole Scooby gang had paid dearly. Dawn would never leave the wheelchair she was confined to now. Tara's mind didn't return – in fact, she was closer to catatonic than insane, these days. The wound the Knights of Byzantium had given Giles had become infected, and although he had recovered after a long hospitalization, he was frail and seemed years older than he had before. And Anya was killed.

When he saw her lying there, Xander thought she'd just been knocked out. His already overloaded mind managed to ignore the spreading puddle of blood beneath her still figure, and he kept patting her face, saying, "An? Wake up. An?" He had the damned ring in his pocket – after this all ended, he was going to ask her to marry him. Instead, she'd been buried with it on.

He still didn't remember much – Buffy led him away, he thought. She made all the arrangements, since he wasn't capable, and she'd done it so recently for her mother that she knew just what had to be done. He'd acted a lot like Tara for a while – eating and sleeping when he was told to do so, moving through life in a gentle mist that kept him from actually feeling anything at all. A few days after the funeral, he woke up in Buffy's guest room, crying. He didn't stop for six hours – not until the medicine Buffy gave him kicked in. Anya's ghost came to him that night, and had been with him ever since.

They all thought he was seeing things – dealing with his grief in a delusional manner, Giles had said. So after a while, he stopped talking about her, pretended he didn't hear the stuff she said in public, and generally tried to behave like a functioning member of society instead of a man being followed around by a ghost. And at first, it really had made him feel better, having her there.

But the problem was, he _did_ feel better, now. And she wasn't going away. At least she'd finally stopped bemoaning the fact that ghosts were unable to have sex – that had been a little too odd a discussion topic for Xander to handle.

But she was right – they also didn't sleep, didn't eat, didn't pee. She was more than happy, however, to watch Xander do all those things. He'd crawl into bed every night after having her watch him take off his clothes, wash his face, brush his teeth – and he'd get up the next morning to her smiling face, as if she'd been sitting there all night just waiting for his eyes to open.

And she kept noticing girls for him. Xander had all but abandoned going to the Bronze or any other nightspot. Anya would sit right beside him (she didn't have any need for a chair) and chatter in his ear about how that one had nice legs, and the other looked great in black, until he finally had to excuse himself and leave.

One night after such an episode, she seemed a bit irritated at him. "You don't appear interested in the pretty girls I'm showing you, Xander. Why not? Have you decided to follow Willow's example, and turned your interest to men instead? I'm even better at finding good-looking men," she said with grim determination.

"NO, uh, no, An, I'm not gay. I have no plans to switch-hit in the near future – or the distant future, for that matter. I'm not in the market for a girl just now, though, either. My girlfriend, with whom I anticipated spending the rest of my life, just recently died. You should know that, since it was you. Why are you acting like the hostess for _The Dating Game_ all the time?"

For the first time since her ghost had arrived, Anya appeared sad. "I can't come back for real, and I don't want you to be lonely. When I saw you fall apart, I asked if I could come help you, and that's why I'm here."

"But An, I'm fine now. I'll miss you – I'll always miss you – but I can go on. I love you very much, but you don't need to take care of me. I'll be okay."

But she pouted, and shook her head, and so, to make his dead girlfriend happy, Xander tried.

His first effort was with a little dark haired girl he met at the bank. Actually, she was a teller there. Her station was right in front of a window, so he knew she didn't have sunlight "allergies," and when he finally asked her out, Anya started jumping up and down and screaming. Not for the first time, he was glad he was the only person who could see and hear her.

He called Buffy and Willow, and got their advice on where to take her, what to wear, even what he should order from the menu. He and An had been so comfortable with each other, they didn't do the whole dating thing, and their relationship hadn't had the most conventional start, either. So he felt totally out to sea when it came to a regular-type date.

The phone rang at ten o'clock sharp on Sunday morning after the big event. He didn't even have to ask – he picked up the receiver and answered, "Hi, Buffy."

"Well, how did it go?" the Slayer asked him eagerly.

He'd already been through it all with Anya, so he felt like he was repeating answers that were rehearsed. "Okay," he hemmed.

"Okay? No better?"

"It was just a first date – the first date I've had in – well, maybe my lifetime, if you don't count the prom. I wasn't expecting fabulous, myself."

"Are you going to take her out again?"

"I dunno, Buff – she's short."

He could almost hear her eyes rolling. "Xaaander! How tall is she?"

"I dunno – five-two, five-three."

"I'm five-three. Something wrong with _me_?" 

"Your attitude is taller. Besides, you're _Buffy_," he explained, as if that made all the difference in everything, which in his opinion, it did.

"I think you should take her out again."

Anya thought so, too, so he did. There was no chemistry, he explained to Willow later on the phone. But there was something else missing – something he couldn't tell his friends about. There was also no Anya.

Apparently, the only time his faithful ghost wasn't right beside him was when another woman was. The first time, he'd barely noticed, being too occupied with which fork to use and how much twenty percent came to. And Anya hadn't said anything afterwards, outside of quizzing him, and it hadn't occurred to him that she should know the answer to some of those questions if she'd been there. But on the second date, the movie wasn't really very good, and he started looking around, remembering how he and An would have simply made out in a flick this bad, which led to the thought that An was conspicuously absent right then. That, and the thought that he had absolutely no desire to make out with the girl he was there with.

Maybe it was just _­this_­ girl. He decided he'd give this dating thing another try, and he asked Erica Wilson to go bowling.

Erica worked at the home office of his construction company, and Xander, being interior foreman, had to go there regularly for meetings. He'd flirted harmlessly with Erica before Anya had died, and she knew when he'd stopped, why. She'd been kind and understanding, even sending a sympathy card, and recently, he'd begun mild flirting with her again, just to keep in practice. So she was a safe bet, in his opinion. And bowling was casual enough that he wouldn't feel bad if things didn't go well between them. Besides, he wanted to see if Anya showed up.

She wasn't in the car on the way to pick Erica up. She didn't sit beside him at the scoring desk. When he started feeding quarters to the _Quake_ machine, he was sure she was nowhere to be found – she used to always watch him play and make up stories about the people he was busy shooting, particularly the men. Her tales of disloyalty to explain why they needed to die usually drew a crowd of women, and kept the other guys far away. If she wasn't watching the game, she wasn't present.

The date had been okay – Erica was certainly more fun than the bank teller had been. She bowled passably, and was a decent conversationalist. But he got the feeling that they wouldn't repeat the performance, and while he did walk her to the door, neither of them was really clamoring for a kiss goodnight, so he let it slide, giving her an awkward hug instead.

When he got home, he shut Anya up the minute she got started interrogating him. "If you want to know that badly how it went, why weren't you there?" He knew he was gambling with that opening salvo, since Xander had to admit, as much as he loved Anya, he'd never considered having her grafted on as a permanent attachment, and so he'd kind of enjoyed going out without her. But since being without her had been the only thing he really _had_ enjoyed about dating so far, he wanted to know the reason.

Ghosts, like vampires, didn't have the blood flow to blush. But that girl sure could fidget. She hemmed and hawed and danced around the question until he gave her "the look," which he'd only rarely been irritated enough to use on her. He'd learned it from Buffy, who used it on him in high school almost every time Angel so much as came up in conversation. Apparently, its effectiveness was not limited to high school boys.

"I want you to find somebody, and I'm afraid you won't be able to focus on them if I'm there," she finally admitted.

"Why is it so important to you that I hook up with another girl?" Xander couldn't help but ask.

"You – lost something when I died."

"Yeah, my soon-to-be fiancée," he pointed out. "No duh."

"More than that. Before, you had optimism. You had hope. Even against all odds, living where you do, you believed in 'happy ever after' – in fact, you taught it to me. When I died, a part of you shut down. I'm not the only one who noticed. I've overheard Buffy and Willow talking about it, too." Xander wondered how she could have heard that, since she seemed to be knitted to his heels like Peter Pan's shadow, but he let it go for now. "You stopped thinking in terms of 'forever,' Xan. I left you alone. And that's part of why I came back, until you found someone else who you could trust not to leave. Until you find hope again."

He wanted to argue with her, but that would require examining feelings he'd made sure he buried deep. So deep that just by acknowledging that fact, he might have to admit she was right, and he wasn't going to go there. He did the next best thing, instead. He talked to Willow.

He went over to her place late enough that he was sure she'd already fed Tara and put her to bed. He knew Willow's schedule pretty well, since she'd started calling him on a daily basis after Anya had died, like she used to when they were kids. A lot of times, all she had to talk about was what she was doing, and he got to know pretty much what she did, when. Willow had always been fairly systematic about things. He thought about telling Anya it was a date so he could talk to his best friend privately, but he kind of felt bad about lying, so he just let her come along.

"Will, am I different since Anya died?" he asked, once she'd stopped fussing about having company and offering him an ocean's worth of liquids, all of which he declined. Did he not visit her often enough? _Mental note to spend more face time with best friend._

"What do you mean?" He knew this girl better than himself – she was avoiding the question.

"Have I given up hope, or some silly thing like that?"

"Who said something like that to you?" she asked nervously, and he got the impression that maybe Anya _had_ overheard some conversation to that effect between the witch and the Slayer, after all.

He almost forgot himself for a moment, and told her the truth. That would have shut the conversation down in a heartbeat. "A couple of people have – " he fished for the word, "Implied."

Willow frowned. She knew him pretty well, too, and knew he was lying, but wasn't ready to press the issue. "You don't seem to be dating because you really want to, Xan."

"I'm single. I'm a guy. They're single, they're girls. It's the way it's done – at least, I kinda thought it was. When have I ever done things the normal way before?" He shrugged – he could avoid the question with the best of 'em.

"Exactly," she said confidently, then stopped. "And you don't miss Anya anymore?"

"I'll always love An," he answered, totally honestly. "But I feel like she's always with me, and this is what she would want." _Oh, if only you knew, Wills._

_ _

"You need to talk to Buffy," Willow announced.

"I talk to Buffy almost every day, Wills. You're one on my speed dial, she's two."

"No," the redhead insisted, "You need to _talk_ to Buffy."

"That's what you just said."

"About dating."

Something inside Xander rose up in protest. Dating and Buffy in the same sentence with no intervening nouns couldn't possibly be a good thing. "Why? "She hasn't dated since Riley left – what? Almost two years ago, now?"

"Yup. So she understands what you're going through, more than anyone. Talk to her about it."

After he kissed Willow on the cheek and got into his car, he just sat for a few minutes. "Well?" he finally asked Anya.

"Well, what?"

"You didn't say anything in there. That's not like you."

"Maybe because I didn't feel the need to add anything to what Willow said?"

"Now there's a first." The ghost stuck her tongue out at him.

He pulled into the driveway of the house on Revello Drive that had been more home to him than the house a few blocks away where he'd spent his childhood. He was trying to remember the last time he'd been there. _Mental note #2: more face time with _both_ best friends._

_ _

Walking up the ramp to the front door, he was vaguely aware of the filmy figure in his wake, and he wondered if Anya would have more to say here. He raised his hand to knock on the door, and it swung open before he made contact. "What took you so long?"

"Huh?"

"Willow called a while ago and said you were coming."

She stepped aside, and he walked in. "You got new drapes."

"The old ones were too long – they got caught in Dawn's wheels and ripped."

"How is Dawnie?"

"She's actually pretty happy these days. Whipping around in that electric wheelchair, she's the terror of the halls at Sunnydale High." Her serious expression melted to a grin. After everything that happened, the school had dropped the idea of taking Dawn from Buffy's custody, and been fully supportive of both girls. Of course, they also thought that she'd been suffering a degenerative disease that put her in the chair, and that was used as the excuse for her prior absences and bad grades. She'd been a model student since. "She's gonna be mad she missed you." Buffy sat on the couch.

"Yeah. I'll have to start coming around again more." Xander sat beside her.

"Well, with your new social life and all…"

Xander hung his head. "I don't know why I let those girls and all that stuff get in the way of our friendship, Buff. I've been a little confused lately."

"Well, this sudden compulsion to date also seemed coupled with avoidance of all things Buffy," she said, a bit of hurt in her voice.

"I asked you for advice," he protested defensively. Her silence clearly said 'not impressed.' Xander appeared thoughtful. "Did we lose each other somewhere along the way, Buff?"

She was quiet for a few long minutes. "After Anya died, you went away, it seemed."

Xander felt guilty for a moment. With the ghost of his late lover as his constant companion, he felt he had no choice but to pull away from his friends. They didn't understand – they couldn't. But then a spark of anger welled up in Xander's soul. "I didn't go away then," he said bitterly. "You pushed me away long before An died. You wanted me to be your second on rare occasions, but you mostly let me stand around and feel useless. You trusted Spike more than you did me." 

He felt guilty again immediately afterwards. He knew what Buffy had been going through – she lost Riley, her mother, and then almost lost Dawn. He could see where a weaker woman would have just given up. He had no right to chastise her for how she treated him during that time. Except maybe about the Spike thing.

He looked up to see his own emotions echoed in Buffy's expression. "I never did get it right with you, did I?" She shook her head and laughed humorlessly. "I try to keep you safe, and you always think I'm shutting you out."

"It's not good for a guy's ego to have the girl protecting him from harm. Why do you always feel the need to cover me with bubble-wrap and stick me in the corner, when you let Willow put her neck on the block without argument?"

Buffy had clearly thought about it a lot more than Xander ever imagined. "You've always had the most to live for, Xan. The best shot at a normal life – I didn't want to see you give that up. Once you had Anya, you had a chance at being the only one of us to get married, have kids, grow old gracefully." She smiled for real for a moment. "Although you've never done anything particularly gracefully." He snorted in derision, and she looked down at her hands. "Anyway, I didn't want you to lose that. What you and Anya had, I could only dream about. But you just kept trying to get hurt – and before you explain, I know it's because you care about me, and Wills, and all. But that didn't matter as much as what you and Anya had. It shouldn't. You did it 'cos you loved us all, but Anya only did it because she loved you. I could protect you both if I could keep you safe." He couldn't hear the tears in her voice, but he saw her reach up and wipe her eyes surreptitiously. "But I failed. She got killed. I took your future away from you, Xan. I'm sorry."

He lifted her chin and saw the tracks on her face, wiping them gently with his thumb. "You didn't take my future – you saved everyone's future, Buff. And An did what we did because of me, at first, but she really did care about you. She told me one time she never thought doing something to help other people could feel so good, but that she liked saving mankind almost as much as punishing it. I can honestly say she wasn't bitter about dying the way she did." He looked around, but didn't see her ghost to confirm that. Still, he was pretty certain.

"I suppose you two talked it over when her ghost was hanging around," Buffy said, trying for a light tone and failing miserably.

"We probably should…" he began thoughtfully, "Have. We probably should have." He was still scanning the area for her figure, a little concerned by Anya's absence. Half his mind did wonder if Buffy was humoring him or had really believed An had been there with him. His hand was still cupped around Buffy's face, and she covered it with her own, looking for something deep in his eyes. It seemed she found it, and it made her smile.

"Anyway," she said, this time achieving the light tone she'd been striving for earlier, "You came over here to talk about dating, right?" She was still holding his hand to her face, and sitting rather close. Xander's heart rate sped up a little.

"Uhh." His mind refused to switch gears without grinding. Anya wanted him to date; Buffy wanted him to talk about dating. Would Anya want him to date Buffy? Would Buffy?

"Maybe the whole problem is the people you've been dating," she went on, not seeming to notice the incongruity of their physical position and this subject. "You've hardly known these girls. You might need to be with someone who already knows you. Maybe they don't completely understand you," her head seemed to be resting affectionately against his palm now, "but they'd like a chance to try."

"Uhm, Buffy," he stammered, wondering if he was reading signs or back to his old habit of wishful thinking, "Would _you_ like to go out with me? Like maybe tomorrow?" His whole being clenched, waiting for the inevitable attempt to let him down easy. He realized that with the other two girls, he hadn't been nervous when he'd asked them out because he hadn't that much cared. But if Buffy turned him down, again, he wasn't sure of what he'd do. After a couple of years of not thinking of her in 'that way,' the idea that he might ever have a chance with Buffy Summers floored him totally.

She spoke softly, and his own mental monologue almost drowned out her answer. "I thought you'd never ask," she whispered, turning her head and kissing his palm.

Outside, he heard the sound of one of Sunnydale's many church bells ringing.

~**~

"You did a nice job, young lady," the heavyset fellow in old-fashioned clothing congratulated the new angel.

She was twisting in the air, trying to see behind her. "Wings," Anya said in wonder. "Thanks, Cleveland."

"It's Clarence," he said with forced patience, then softening, "and I had nothing to do with it. You earned them." He gazed at the unaware couple on the couch as they went through the newspaper, arguing affectionately about the movie they wanted to see. Once in a while, one would touch the other, as if not quite believing the person beside them was real."I have no doubt they belong together, but how did you know you could make this happen? You seemed pretty certain."

Anya smiled. "I've always known how he felt. I wasn't totally sure about her, but she'd be crazy to keep ignoring him now, and I don't think she's nuts. My assignment was to make sure he had the chance to be happy again, and I knew she was the only one that could guarantee that." Her smile faded a bit. "I'm sure going to miss him." She looked distant for a moment. "Hey!" she yelled, and Clarence jumped. "Now that I'm an angel, can I do miracles?"

"Ye-e-es," the winged man answered carefully, "If we clear them with the Boss."

"Well, here's my idea…" She outlined a plan, and Clarence's face lit up.

"You surprise me still. But your unselfishness was what earned you your chance to be an angel. You've come a long way for a former demon." Waving a hand in the air, a small shimmer flickered and faded. "He approved. Done." He placed an arm around her slender shoulders, their shining wings colliding as he did so. "Let me tell you about how I earned _my_ wings. Ever hear of a place called Bedford Falls?" The two filmy figures faded away, while on the couch, the completely oblivious man and woman laughed happily.

~**~

Willow wondered what was happening over at Buffy's. She and her best friend had talked a lot about the current situation, and it was clear to the witch that Buffy had been hurt when Xander had started dating and not asked her to go out. She'd seen the other girl's feelings growing ever since she'd taken care of Xander after Anya's death. Her tender concern had grown into something much stronger, and yet she'd been afraid to approach him. The two of them had both been through so much, Willow was sure there was no one else who could understand either of them like the other could. She hoped Xander wasn't quite as dense with the Slayer as he'd been with her in high school.

She heard a noise from upstairs. She'd been preparing the syringe for the evening, although she'd hoped she wouldn't have to use it tonight. Sometimes Tara woke up in the night agitated, though, and the sedative was the only way to calm her down, so Willow always kept one by the bed. This was far earlier than anything usually happened, however.

"Tara," she called out, "I'm coming, baby." She stepped from the kitchen to the living room, syringe in hand. She stopped in her tracks when she saw her girlfriend coming down the stairs. "Tara?"

"Willow?" the blonde said breathlessly. "Willow!" Tara ran down the last few steps. "I'm okay. I'm all here. It's me!"  
  


The redhead stood speechless, as the syringe dropped from her nerveless fingers and bounced on the floor. "Tara?" Suddenly she awoke from her frozen shock, and ran to the other girl, clutching her to her and crying. "Tara! Oh, thank God!"

She didn't hear the familiar voice that whispered, "He says 'you're welcome'." Although the shiny feather she found in the hallway the next day was always special to her.

~**~


End file.
